Statistical ecology

Trained in mathematics and statistics in particular, I have developed a bottomless taste for questions in statistical ecology.

I often resort to state-space models, and hidden Markov models (e.g., here and here) in particular, to develop statistical methods for capture-recapture, occupancy and integrated population models.

In our group, we address questions in conservation biology to assess species viability, in ecology to study the effect of climate change on animal demography, in evolution to examine life-history tactics and individual heterogeneity and in wildlife management to develop strategies for conservation and conflict mitigation. To account for the human dimension inherent to these questions, I went back to the university to study sociology. A nice illustration of this interdisciplinary work is Gilles Maurer’s PhD combining anthropology, demography, economics and genetics to better understand the interactions between captive and wild population of Asian elephants.

I’m doing my best to teach statistics (including the Bayesian way) to the students of the Ecology and Evolution Master in Montpellier. We also make efforts to structure the community in France through our national research group in statistical ecology. Last but not least, every now and then, our group runs workshops to diffuse quantitative methods in the ecological community.